What do you think about income inequality?

Parent Cafe
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<p>So what’s the answer? How do we bring back manufacturing?</p>

<p>How do we bring back the horse and buggy?</p>

<p>We’re where we’re at because of progress. We’ve moved beyond manufacturing domestically in many cases. </p>

<p>We’re a free society. We can’t force people to learn a new trade/skill if they refuse to learn. However, we can encourage them with certain policies and incentives (such as receiving unemployment benefits WHILE being retrained.). Having policies that discourage that education process can be part of the problem.</p>

<p>Subsidies…
We’re supposed to subsidize things/actions that we want more of.</p>

102

<p>It’t not just going to be manufacturing jobs going away…someday…</p>

<p>“Structurally, it is also useful to note that the increase in the number of unemployed, and number of people exiting the workforce, came nearly entirely from the statistical cadre over 25 with a college degree of higher – (labor force dropping by 332,000, unemployed rising by 97,000).* Higher paying jobs continue to shrink, lower paying service sector employers hiring cheap labor.* Sticky wages starting to get unstuck as unemployed become more hopeless?* This would be a deflationary signal. *Keep an eye on that hourly wage number going forward.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/wages-may-be-flat-now-but-the-wages-of-high-earners-are-starting-to-fall-2010-12[/url]”>Look Out: the Wages of High Earners Are Starting to Fall;

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<p>Funny thing is we don’t need to subsidize alternative energy or fighting disease (though we do) because private investors are chasing these arenas. Why? The promise of a huge financial payoff. I don’t generally think of venture capitalists as altruists, but their hearts and money are in these big time. Manufacturing? Not so much.</p>

104

<p>No…the government needs to fund alternative energy and the fight against disease…and it does. .How much is that rebate when a person buys a Chevy Volt, or puts solar panels on a house?</p>

<p>But more can be done.</p>

<p>The private sector isn’t going to fund nuclear fusion.</p>

<p>Oh…and I forgot. Venture capitalists get tax breaks…so they are subsidized.</p>

105

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<p>It’s pretty arbitrary. I’ve used it in a loose fashion, contrary to the norm. I meant a “good” person as in a person with high abilities (includes intelligence and personality traits). </p>

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<p>It’s the latter. They aren’t rich but they’ve made a lot of right choices.</p>

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<p>^ Then just strive to make good choices.</p>

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<p>ELECTED local officials choose to subsidize sports teams because largely, their constituents like the “value” brought by those teams to the local economy. As a resident of Indianapolis, I will tell you, the Colts were one part of the success of our city. People locate their businesses here because we have a nice mix of arts, athletics, etc. Funny how many of the people who argue against the subsidies of sports are all for the subsidization of the arts. Ultimately, if elected officials make these decisions, I’m less uncomfortable. You can vote em out.</p>

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<p>12 - 15 Billion a year. What is that? The amount of money generated annually by the NFL. There is no mystery about why cities fight over one another to subsidize these teams. If only everything else we subsidized had that kind of rate of return.</p>

109

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Then is a person with lesser abilities “bad”?</p>

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<p>Nichole,</p>

<p>With the massive flux of the stock market, jobs, real estate, and personal net worth over the last several years, there are now many, many ‘good’ people without a pot to…well, through pebbles in. They are still good, hardworking people. Sadly, there are people who in the face of personal financial ruin have taken their own lives. We are not a dollar figure attached to our salaries, our job titles, our parking spaces, or our homes square footage. If these are the things that you value yourself by, you can quickly be destroyed.</p>

<p>I grew up in an area with a lot of money… a lot of it. I became very immune to salaries, titles (earned, elected, or otherwise), or personal belongings. When I meet someone I want to know who they are, what kind of father they are, do they know their kids birthday, do they help in their community, do they know their neighbors name? I honestly care more about who they have on their fantasy football team more than I care about their job! (btw, if they drafted Farve, the conversation is over…they most certainly are a bad person.)</p>

<p>Money is neither good nor evil, it can be used for both. If you look to your resume and paycheck for validation you stand on very shaky ground.</p>

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<p>what is wrong with making things?
What is wrong with using materials we can acquire locally & have supervision over their processing unlike things made thousands of miles away- which we have to recall because they are poisoning our children?</p>

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<p>Information is the commodity being paid for. We will never return to a manufacturing based economy.</p>

<p>Perhaps you are coreect.
I guess that means we are not as intelligent as we would like to think.
[Boeing</a> engineers: Use delay to reconsider outsourcing on 787](<a href=“http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/230537.asp]Boeing”>http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/230537.asp)</p>

113

<p>What is wrong with using materials we can acquire locally</p>

<p>Because American labor is expensive.</p>

<p>Why do many of us do minor (and sometimes major) work on our cars? Because labor is expensive. Why do many of us try to fix our appliances when a part needs replacing? Why do many of us paint our own homes or do our own remodeling? Because American labor is expensive. </p>

<p>Do many of us feel guilty when we do a job ourselves instead of hiring someone? I don’t so. We can’t afford the alternative.</p>

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<p>We actually will start manufacturing more. But that manufacturing will be much more automated, higher skilled, and will require people who can understand things like PLCs and HMIs. You will need at least a technical education to work within it. You will need to take a lifetime of continuing ed to stay on top of it. We will never again have people earning $40 an hour - more than most of the plant engineers - sitting playing cards while they wait for technical people to fix the equipment that they broke on purpose, knowing that the union would protect them.</p>

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<p>People hate the rich really only out of jealousy. There seems to be this myth – and its that – that the rich are rich because they “exploit” and “ripoff” and “steal” from the poor, and that the system is “rigged” to favor them. I don’t see how Microsoft (Bill Gates) exploits me when I buy Windows software: there are tons of alternatives, and I even can just not buy a computer. I have yet to have Bill Gates come into my home, hold my children hostage, point a gun to my head and demand ransom in the form of Windows 7. All of us have a choice. If you choose to get pregnant at 16 and work in a pizza joint and never get any further education: (a) you drastically reduce your own chance of ever becoming “rich” and (b) you drastically reduce the chances of your progeny ever becoming rich (because you’re sloppy and stupid). Was that choice Bill Gates’ fault? Hmmmmm . . . how did he exploit you? Most people are poor because they couldn’t discipline themselves to get the education they needed to then put themselves in better circumstances and surround themselves with better minds and opportunities that naturally come to those who have, simply, “more on the ball.” No, it’s just jealousy pure and simple. The implication that “growing income inequality” somehow reflects that the rich are engineering the inequality on the backs of the poor is a fallacy. The poor have tons of choices, and they have chosen to help make the Waltons rich by shopping at Wal-Mart instead of at other local stores. Why do they do that!! O, it turns out that Wal-Mart delivers really good stuff and really cheap prices – turns out that the American poor actually must be exploiting all that cheap labor in China. Who’s exploiting whom here?</p>

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<p>If the 40 dollar an hour jobs are gone, then income will be down, and income taxes will be lower, and society will have to get the money elsewhere. I wonder where that money is?</p>

<p>The information about which firms and people borrowed from the government During the financial crisis came out this week and it made for interesting reading. Besides the fact that the government was lending money at almost nothing so banks could survive and make money, hedge funds and firms like Pimco were also able to borrow at the Fed. So…hedge funds…funds run by billionaires like Paulson, were able to borrow money at very low rates, and buy securities, and if they held them for a year, they would get long term capital gains tax treatment. So people like Paulson benefitted by the government at both ends.</p>

<p>Subsidized at both ends. Kind of like a candle burning at both ends. Kind
of a nice trick.</p>

<p>And this didn’t have to happen. The government could have purchased these securities and eliminated the middle man…people like Paulson.</p>

<p>And if there were rules on leverage, Paulson wouldn’t have gotten so rich
in the first place, and society wouldn’t have had to pay for the losses. </p>

<p>I am just using Paulson as an example. There were many others. </p>

<p>So…this income and wealth inequality…didn’t just happen. There were choices made that led to this disparity. </p>

<p>You don’t have this disparity in Germany. And people seem to think the
German economy is running a little better than ours.</p>

<p>So…since we have this disparity…maybe there could be some actions taken to at least raise the standard of living for the middle class. I don’t know…we can have financial regulations with some bite. Make the tax system more progressive. Value education for the masses. Value social
goods. Subsidize companies that create jobs here…and take away subsidies for compamies that ship jobs overseas. Take care of people that are having trouble getting jobs in thr mean time, many of whom are highly educated. We can rebuild our infrastructure, which would help people and private companies too. I heard this week that our
infrastructure needs 2 trillion to fix up. You can employ a lot of people with that kind of investment.</p>

<p>Or we can just do what we are doing and tell people you are just don’t
work hard enough and you aren’t educated enough.</p>

<p>I hear that Hong Kong is going to supplant NY and London as the financial capital of the world. Companies are going to do IPOs in Hong
Kong instead of the US. </p>

<p>That is the way it goes…I guess those New Yorkers just don’t work hard enough. Aren’t smart enough. I guess some day it will be Shanghai and Hong Kong.</p>

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<p>One at a time …</p>

<p>401ks. We went from a world where most full-time employees were on defined pension plans to a world where employees for a tax break to fund their own retirement accounts. The overall scorecard.<br>

  • Defined pensions in the private sector are almost dead
  • The rate of participation in 401ks is lopsided towards the wealthy
  • The savings rate (1-10%) in 401ks is lopsided towards the wealthy
  • So the lower wage workers are in worse position for retirment
  • While higher wage workers are generally in good shape
  • Add the tax break is contributing to the debt … and overwhelming goes to the higher income families.
  • Or said the other way … we moved from company paid pensions … to employee funded retirement funds in a system that most lower paid employees can not particiapte at a rate that covers them in retirement … and we’re overwhelming giving a tax break to higher wage earners which is being subsidized by everyone (when we pay back the deficit).</p>

<p>Brilliant plan … brillant politics … brillant outcome … if your goal is to take care of the richest americans.</p>

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<p>One at a time … deregulation … never mind … no chance I’m going to change any ones opinion on this stuff anyways</p>

119

<p>3togo is right.</p>

<p>David Stockman has been running around…speaking in different media outlets. I think very few would say he wasn’t a fiscal conservative.</p>

<p>And he says what we are doing is insane. The numbers don’t add up. We are giving tax breaks to the wealthy, those that have already done the best financially over the last 30 years, and would do the best without the tax breaks, and borrowing the money to do it. </p>

<p>It’s crazy.</p>

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<p>Ultimately the Chinese economy is going to be bigger than ours. Obviously. We’re going to have to compete with that or die. And if we continue to artificially pay people more than their economic worth we will lose all the jobs to places like Indonesia and China. The way that we fight it is by building the skills of our workers and by strengthening the understanding that our corporations are a team made of managers and workers who are building safe, high quality products TOGETHER. That’s what the Germans do. They have extremely high quality technical education. They have, for lack of a better word, PRIDE. They do not have unions where the workers and management feel like they are in the business of trying to take away something from one another in order to get ahead. They have the attitude that if they build the best product in the world TOGETHER they will ALL get ahead. And they do. And the South Koreans are right behind them. Look how far Hyundai has come. The Chinese still have the attitude that cheaper cheaper cheaper is better. But they are learning that bad quality will lose business. And most of their manufacturing is very low paid, has very poor quality and a terrible record of worker and customer safety. We are not going back to high wages for no skill. Not ever again. We are not an island. Companies have a choice. Produce high quality goods with high quality labor for good wages and benefits, like the Germans…or compete with low quality labor against the Chinese and Mexicans for low wages and benefits. I think that’s an easy choice.</p>